Caffeine Capital
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2007
1
55
75
Trip End
Ongoing
Dalat, Vietnam
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Dalat is quite an interesting town with its own winery, crazy house (otherwise known as lady of the night) and a mountain 2169m. The wine wasn't, until last year made with grapes (at least not 100%) but mulberry, the new stuff is not so bad and we even had a free try of 200,000+ VND bottle of "Excellence". We visited the crazy house which was architected by a Vietnamese lady who studied in Russia, it's some kind of Gaudiesque building with some macarbe bits and other humerous parts. Spider webs hang over the garden, you climb through the giraffe's neck and visit the termite or tiger rooms. Our final port of call was Lang Biang which after cycling 12kms should take 5 hours up and down, however somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn and ended up battling thorn bushes and bamboo grass for 8 hours. We've still got scars to prove it but luckily we had a trusty stick for Simon to fight back with or we'd still be there.
On the bus to Buon Me Thout Dom complained that somebody had Durian but after all the famillies threw up on the twisty turny road she decided that the fruit smelt better. This town is the caffeine capital, the coffee in Vietnam mostly comes from here, it's served in short glasses and is very strong, if you mix it with milk it tastes almost like baileys. There is a fantastic waterfall just outside town which we visited by taking the number 13 bus (nobody in town seems to know about this, but the villagers do). We were both reminded of Foz de Igauzu which we saw in Brazil/Argentina 10 years ago, it's wide, set in the jungle and comes roaring over several cliffs. If we saw these falls during the rainy season they'd be even more impressive.
Comments
not your local espresso
you like the local coffee. I have heard it is pretty strong over there. I love the smell of coffee beans, it 's enough to wake you up in the morning. And what happened here - 'however somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn and ended up battling thorn bushes and bamboo grass for 8 hours. We've still got scars to prove it but luckily we had a trusty stick for Simon to fight back with or we'd still be there- 8 hours..who's navigating here? Was this after coctails or before cause i think a drink was in order after this ordeal. Oh, and the tiger room is awesome.
Damon